Some free Big Finishes are available on Soundcloud. Others you have to purchase for $0 on BigFinish.com so you can download them (meaning you have to create a login account). Some are available in both places.Most of these freebies were originally released as CD inserts with Doctor Who Magazine. They tend to be no-frills adventures of 30 to 40 minutes with a simple script, a small cast of 2-3 voice actors, and limited FX and music. I worry that they’re not representative of the high quality one can expect from Big Finish’s paid ranges. But hey, they’re free.

Big Finish Free Streaming on Spotify (as of May 2017)

Big Finish has generously offered most of its early titles on Spotify for streaming. These include the first Fifty Main Range adventures (Doctors Five through Eight) and the first seasons of many of the Big Finish spinoffs. Main Range are 4×25 minute episodes with cliffhangers in the style of classic Who TV serials. The rest are usually an hour, apart from Short Trips which are 8×15-minute short stories.

Here’s an index with links to each Big Finish Doctor Who audio on Spotify. You’ll need to register a username and password to listen, but that’s all.

These are full cast audio plays which try as closely as possible to capture the style/feel of classic who TV serials, with better writing and a bit more character development. Most Main Range are standalone. Those with arcs I’ve starred (Eight & Charley audios all follow a loose character development arc; * are the ones with essential beats for Charley’s Bigass Plot. “Project: [X]” ** audios are a multi-Doctor arc.) Bold are audios I’ve rated 8/10 or above. I’ve all of these.

Primeval – Fifth Doctor, Nyssa (9/10, FINALLY a good story for them; the Doctor takes Nyssa back to Traken thousands of years before its destruction. Guest star Steven Grief (Travis in Blake’s 7.)

The One Doctor – Sixth Doctor, Mel (8/10 with a Doctor impersonator! A fond spoof of classic Who.)

Invaders from Mars – Eight, Charley (4/10, Riff on War of the Worlds Orson Welles broadcast; I really didn’t like the stereotypical sleazy gay villain)

The Chimes at Midnight* (Eight, Charley) 8/10, This Christmas horror story and Spare Parts were voted the top two Big Finish audios ever.

Seasons of Fear* (Eight, Charley) 8/10, I love this one; each episode lets them tackle the same problem in a different historical era of Earth.

Embrace the Darkness (Eight, Charley) 7/10. Eek. Good SF horror. I like it, but it’s not quite as excellent/essential as its two predecessors for the arc.

The Time of the Daleks* (Eight, Charley) 5/10. Not my favorite Dalek story, but there’s some important beats for their arc you probably shouldn’t skip.

Neverland* (Eight, Charley, Romana) 10/10. Payoff/crisis point for Eight and Charley’s arc. Essential listening. I suspect this one influenced Gatiss and RTD in how the new series envisioned Gallifrey.

Spare Parts* (Fifth Doctor, Nyssa) 10/10. Guest star Sally Knyvette (Blake’s 7). One of the top two rated Big Finishes ever, basically Genesis of the Cybermen. IF YOU LISTEN TO ONLY ONE… But it’s dark.

…Ish. (Sixth Doctor, Peri) 9/10. I adore this one, but it’s esoteric: a murder mystery set at a university in the future.

Jubilee (Sixth Doctor, Evelyn) 9/10. RTD liked this one so much he asked Rob Shearman to rewrite/adapt it to help kickstart new Who. Dalek was the result. Very different, but you can see how the story germ (and one of the best scenes) are the same. Personally, I think this version is better, if darker.

Nekromantia (Five, Peri, Erimem) – Listen at your own risk; only one I’ve skipped on friends’ recommendations; includes gratuitous sexual assault on companion without dealing with the fallout from it.

Creatures of Beauty – (Fifth Doctor, Nyssa) 8/10 Daring experiment in storytelling, dark, but excellent. Be prepared to be confused for a while; it’s like a jigsaw puzzle with the picture gradually coming together.

Flip Flop (Seventh Doctor, Mel) 8/10 Clever timey-wimey story which works equally well if you start with CD#1 (Part I) or CD #2 (Part III).

Omega (Fifth Doctor) – 8/10, leading up to Big Finish’s 50th release in 2003, 5 years after BF began, the Main Range Doctors each got to face off with a classic Who antagonist. All of these are excellent.

Zagreus* (Eight, Charley) – 7/10, fanservice 6-part epic that some fans love, others loathe; I enjoy it but think it’s about one episode too long. Every single classic Who Doctor/companion Big Finish could get their hands on plays someone in this, not necessarily their usual role. It accidentally sets the stage for the Gallifrey political drama when Leela and Romana meet for the first time.

Lost Stories are abandoned classic Who TV scripts, stories that died in development, or stories from lost seasons that were never filmed. Big Finish revised, rewrote, improved and finished them. The first series is Colin Baker’s Revenge: the season that was lost when the show went on hiatus through no fault of his.

A sequence of four one-hour stories featuring the Seventh Doctor, Elizabeth Klein, Raine (a companion that would’ve come aboard after Ace had classic Who not been cancelled), and **SPOILER REDACTED** played by the brilliant Alex MacQueen. Haven’t heard it, but I’ve heard good things about it.

Unlike most Big Finish ranges, Short Trips are not full-cast radio plays. They’re mini audiobooks, nowadays half an hour, but these anthologies are eight 15-minute short stories read by a single narrator, usually a companion or (for Five and Six) the Doctor himself. I love listening to these while doing chores. Vol I has several of my favorites including Colin Baker’s very own delightful fanfic “Wings of a Butterfly.”

One-hour adventures. Early on, Big Finish hit upon CCs as a way to tell stories with Doctors who are no longer with us, recollected by their surviving companions. They’re fan favorites because they tend to show the Doctor and the adventure through each companion’s eyes. I’ve heard 2 & 4 and enjoyed them; from what I’ve heard the other two are even better.

One-hour adventures, essentially Companion Chronicles for every Doctor as of 2013, narrated by a companion from that Doctor’s run. (Except Nine, unfortunately; it’s narrated by a monster from that era instead. 😉 ) Smoke and Mirrors was good, representative of its TARDIS team; I expect the others are too.

Big Finish adapted/redramatized a few classic Who stories that made it to the stage over the years. I have no idea how good these are but assume Big Finish wouldn’t showcase them on Spotify if they weren’t good advertisements.

Dalek Empire, Nicholas Briggs’ baby, is one of Big Finish’s earliest spinoffs, and it is… epic, gripping, and heartbreaking. It asks the chilling question: what if the Daleks strike when the Doctor is not around to stop them (since this took place after Zagreus, and he wasn’t around for a while?)

It turned Daleks from an annoying and somewhat silly Who monster I disliked to a terrifying force one truly believes are the most dangerous monsters in the universe. But the humans/humanoids in this story are what make it truly powerful. The memorable Gareth Thomas (Blake of Blake’s 7) plays Kalendorf, but Sarah Mowat as Susan Mendez is the real star. (David Tennant also starred in series 3 before being cast as the Doctor.)

Writers of Doctor Who like Rob Shearman and Paul Cornell refused to write the second season because they wanted to enjoy it as fans. I’m sure RTD had these Daleks in mind when he envisioned the Time War. I can’t recommend it enough

35 years ago, my Mom said the guest characters Jago & Litefoot in The Talons of Weng-Chiang were so good they should have their own spinoff. Tragically, she was right, but she’s forgotten all about them, and I can’t get her to listen. Don’t make the same mistake. They’re brilliant: Victorian paranormal investigators, old friends of the Doctor.

Professor Bernice (Benny) Summerfield is the smart, cynical 26th-century archaeologist-cum-Lara-Croft who really, really needs a drink. Her sometime nemesis Braxiatel may be the Doctor’s own brother. I’ve only caught a few Bennys, but Lisa Bowerman has played her for 20 years— in fact, Big Finish won the license to product audio Who thanks to the calibre of the early Benny range.

I’m going to be lazy and not copy all of them here because I think that playlist has all of them on Spotify: Five seasons, 3 stories per season.

I grew up watching Katy Manning as Jo Grant, the Third Doctor’s companion, but in her old age Katy is having an absolute ball playing Time Lady (?) Iris Wildthyme, rocketing around the universe driving her double-decker bus TARDIS and getting into almost as much trouble as she causes. Retired movie star, fashion icon and alcohol connoisseur, Iris is another amazing personality in the Who Expanded Universe.

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Hey, a fantastic post! I can’t encourage ppl more to try out the Spotify option of money is an issue or your brand new to Big Finish. (PS for all you Google Music/ YouTube Red perps, BigFinish is also available on Google). There’s literally 100’s of titles on Spotify & Google that Big Finish have generously offered to the public. Please don’t forget BigFinish are a very small company. AudioGo (BBC own AudioBook business) closed down forever because of financial problems & they were 40x the size of BigFinish!!! Torrents do really hurt small publishers like them. At least if you use Spotify they’ll get a nominal payment. But if everyone who torrents their stuff (steals) stopped and instead got their content from Spotify then that would really really help them out financially and it doesn’t need to cost you a cent, as you can access their content either as a free subscriber of premium like myself. Like the author had said, there’s so much content at BigFinish that’s heavily discounted. Join their Twitter feed and get notified of their regular weekly/monthly specials – often 50%+ off!! They’re really going out of there way to cater to everyone’s budget. So don’t steal content. I should know as I used to. I feel terrible for doing so. Now I’m one of their most regular customers, after lying to myself for years I couldn’t afford to be. This is a brilliant article. Thanks heaps for posting it!!

Yes, I almost hate to tell people where to find the audios Big Finish has uploaded for free, because I want to support them and worry that too many fans getting their stuff for free might cause them to go under like AudioGo. On the other hand, I understand that fans aren’t made of money. So, a happy medium: if Big Finish thinks their old titles can do them more good as PR/advertising to help new fans get hooked on them, then why not browse?

I need to overhaul this post: I created an index of Big Finish on Spotify over on social media, and I should append it to this post. Thanks for the reminder.